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"What is it?" Cole heard Joshua say, his own face averted and his eyes closed

"Our esteeuest is on deck, sir," he heard a voice say

"Excellent Tell hiht away, sir"

"And I want you to stall Take him to the mast if he’s impatient, that e’ll be there before he knows it"

"Yes, sir" The door banged shut; Cole opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to the relative darkness Joshua stood in front of hi into his fur coat "What’s your na down at the patch on his suit

"No, it’s not" Joshua pulled soht and polished "I recognize the getup I know you’re not hiot me confused for someone else," Cole said "Where I come from, it’s a common na--"

"Do you knohat this is?" Joshua asked He held the two cylinders up for Cole to see, gripping thele fist, side-by-side

Cole shook his head

"Ever heard of the Luddites?"

"I knohat a luddite is," Cole said He snuck a quick glance at Riggs, who seemed livid and confused by the discussion--his forehead was full of wrinkles, but his jaw kept clenching and unclenching

"The Luddites," Joshua said He held one of the glossy cylinders away froround and then stopped, hovering in mid-air less than a meter below its twin

"The terrorists?"

All three of the hters We were once devoted to liberating ood life"

"You preferred to die toothless and young, is that it?"

Cole regretted saying it as soon as it ca Joshua warily, he saw a thin smile creep across the man’s face

"There were soher purpose now We no and understandto fix thehtly and the levitating stick swung in the air, "we still loathe technology Deep down--the original s in life"

Carefully, Joshua reached below the hovering wooden handle and grasped it with his other hand He then brought both of the cylinders parallel to the ground while keeping them apart

"Simple is always better, don’t you think?"

Cole raised his eyebrows

"The wire between these two pieces of wood is constructed almost entirely out of carbon Lovely, beautiful carbon The matrix of life"

He

"The strand is just a few atoether by the natural forces of electroed focus, away froness and fixed on Cole "Do you knohat that makes this lovely wire?"

"Easy to lose?" Cole joked

Joshua tilted his head to the side and s in the universe" He turned to the goons beside Riggs and nodded The s down off histoward Cole before he knelt down and yanked Riggs’s pantleg out of his boot He unzipped the expander on the side of the flightsuit’s leggings, then slid the black fabric up past Riggs’s knee He pulled hard, bunching the ri and noticed for the first ti frooon perfor the boot expander and yanking the h

"What do you want to know?" Cole asked

Joshua flashed the briefest of smiles, there only for an instant He frowned and shook his head "For starters, I want you to stop asking me questions I want the both of you to concentrate instead on spilling your guts"

The goons laughed at this Joshua nodded to one of them and jerked his head toward Cole; the man came over and stood by his side Cole expected hiers in his ribs or ars, but the man clamped his hand over hishis with the two handles held far apart Cole saw his friend’s boots twitch, straining against the ropes Riggs tried to yell sooon cla the two fors’s eyes ide, his nostrils flaring with desperate, shallow breaths

Taking extreme care, Joshua slowly inserted one of the handles in the rack’s trough and fed it behind Riggs’s legs until it slid out the far side He again grasped both handles and held the the invisible thread taut He looked back at Cole and ss

Cole could feel his own eyes bulging as he shouted into the furryhis mouth His cheeks filled with the ht the handles toward his chest Cole knew Joshua would turn to hiive hi bad Orritual A prank

There was alht the two handles together in front of Riggs’s thighs, switched them to the opposite hands, and then pulled them away from one another Cole couldn’t even tell if the s’s face remained frozen for a moment, then his face twisted up in confused concentration, al to place a sh his nose as Joshua stood back and began rolling one of the handles in the air, sucking the other one up to it

The real horror didn’t begin until the goon by Riggs let go of his ainst his restraints, grunting One of his thighs caaped in sick disbelief at the lower half of his friend’s two legs, both of which were still strapped to the rack There see blood, splattering the boots and running down the steel toward the drain The thighs kicked even s writhed in horror Cole’s head filled with a dull roar--his own h his skull, back into the steel rack, then echoing in his ears It gave his rage a e, like fear and hate wrapped in foil